stealth those special talents which God had given them. Educate together from their youth up such men as Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Goethe, Newton and Burns, La Place and Lamartine, Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry, and they might be made more alike, but would the world profit so much by their genius? A wise system of education aims to render available all the mental force of the world. The mechanic may contrive and the merchant make his ventures, the farmer watch his harvests and the statesman promulgate his laws, the naturalist search and the philosopher speculate, the poet kindle the fires of genius upon their intended altars, and the prophet pluck down manna from Heaven to feed soul-hungry mortals-the world needs them all, and teachers must not attempt to thwart what God seems to have designed. But in all this it must be remembered that special talent may result from education as well as be the gift of nature. No fact is more open to the notice of an observer of the phenomena of mind than that mental force may be directed artificially to certain faculties which grow strong by use, while others are dwarfed for want of exercise.

4. THE PERCEPTIVE POWERS ARE STRONGER AND MORE ACTIVE IN YOUTH THAN THE OTHER INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES AND THUS FURNISH A BASIS FOR THE

SUPERSTRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE.-A child is merely an animal until there is awakened in him the power of self-consciousness. After this I can find no time when all his faculties are not active in some degree; but his perceptive powers are the strongest and most

active during the whole period of childhood and youth. Any one who will observe children can scarcely doubt this fact. They like to see and hear things. What is new or strange attracts them. How rapidly they learn the form, color, size, and other qualities of things! What an immense number of facts they acquaint themselves with as they play in garden or yard, walk through field or meadow, or pass along street or highway!

We do not, as some have taught we do, derive all our knowledge from experience; but no psychological truth is more obvious than that we cannot know anything without experience. For the attainment of certain necessary, regulative truths, experience may furnish only the occasion; but its necessity to the knowing process is not less real when it stands directly as the source of our knowing than when it stands indirectly as the occasion of it-when it determines the limits of our knowledge than when our knowledge transcends its limits. Experience therefore may be said to form the basis of knowledge.

Convincing reasons may be found in what has now been said, in favor of enlarging experience as much as possible by taking advantage in the work of education of the strong and active perceptive powers of the young. Let teachers make them acquainted with things, facts, phenomena, that they may have a broad basis upon which to erect the superstructure of knowledge.

5. COMMENCING WITH THE PERCEPTIVE POWERS, THE VARIOUS INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES INCREASE IN

RELATIVE STRENGTH

MEMORY,

IN THE FOLLOWING ORDER
UNDER-

RECOLLECTION, IMAGINATION,

STANDING, REASON.-It must not be understood that the first named of these faculties attains maturity while the others remain in a state of inactivity. Probably, a child in the simple act of refusing to put its hand against a hot stove to-day because yesterday it was burned in doing it, makes use of all the faculties it ever will possess. Still these faculties are relatively stronger at some periods of life than at others, and this fact cannot be overlooked in teaching.

As used here, Memory is the power of retaining knowledge; Recollection is the power by which we awaken what lies dormant in the mind; Imagination is the power the mind has of holding up vividly before itself the thoughts which it has recalled into consciousness; Understanding is the power by which we judge of relations; and Reason is the power that gives birth to those necessary and universal principles which control all thinking. It is proper to remark that this classification is essentially Hamilton's, and the definitions are, in part, his.

It is evident that knowledge must be retained before it can be recalled, that it must be recalled before it can be held up for contemplation, that it must be held up before the mind before its relations. can be judged of, and that the whole thinking process must go on before it can be controlled or regu lated. Logically, therefore, the activities of the several faculties do follow an order of succession, but practically the whole goes on simultaneously

Still, as before stated, these activities differ relatively in degree during the different periods of life.

Next to the Perceptive powers the Memory is the most vigorous intellectual faculty possessed by the young. It is the granary of the mind. Let it be well filled while it can be, as from its stores all the other faculties must take their materials.

A little later the faculties of Recollection and Imagination are developed in full strength. Both are engaged in lifting up the elements of knowledge from the depths of the Memory and placing them in vivid pictures before the mind. The forms of the Imagination are, however, at first rude and fanciful, being yet unchastened by the higher powers of Judgment and Reason.

The Understanding is the working power of the mind. It studies the relations of wholes to parts, parts to wholes, and things to one another. It classifies, generalizes, reasons. This power, although manifesting itself in a little child, does not attain maturity until the age of manhood.

The Reason rules the mind. As soon as a child is conscious of the identity or difference of two objects, he must use his Reason; nor can he take a single step in any intellectual process without its aid. But, while this is true, Reason can never assume full sway until all the other intellectual faculties perform their work. A commanding general cannot wield the whole power of his army unless every subordinate officer and every private does his duty. None but a man intellectually full-grown can make a night use of his Reason, and the most difficult of all Philosophies is the Philosophy of Reason itself.

6. THE HUMAN MIND POSSESSES TWO SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE, THE SENSES AND THE REASON, THE PRODUCTS OF WHICH DIFFER IN KIND. That we derive knowledge through the senses, no one doubts. It consists, in the first place of facts, which, however, may be elaborated into systems of science. Knowledge thus derived may be called empirical knowledge, because its source is experience.

That we possess knowledge which we do not derive through the senses must be evident to all who will consider the matter. Our idea of space, for example, is not merely the sum of all the spaces .embraced in our experience, but it transcends ali possible experience. So of the idea of time. We can acquaint ourselves with things that are very great in extent-the earth, the distances of the heavenly bodies, the profound abysses penetrated by the telescope, but still we know that all these are limited, finite, and we cannot help believing that there is something more, the unlimited, the infinite. No experience can show us that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, or that two parallel lines will never meet, and yet we know that such is the case. We may, indeed, have no adequate conception of the absolute or the infinite, of a creation, of God, or of immortality; but certainly we have ground for thinking that there is something uncaused, something unlimited, that the universe had a beginning, that God is, and the human spirit is immortal. In every direction the intuitions of the Reason overleap the boundaries of experience, and furnish, at least, a ground for enlightened faith, As the Reason is the source of the kind of know